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Mookies |
04:43 PM -- Fri June 10, 2005
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So I was going to tell you, and I will. Mookies came about because of Tin Chef. Tin Chef is a game my wife and I play (very rarely), obviously based on Iron Chef. The rules are simple. One person is the host, and the other is the chef. The host picks 5 ingredients out of the pantry, fridge, and elsewhere, any 5 things. The chef then has 24 hours to think about them and prepare a fabulous meal with the following constraints: 4 of the 5 ingredients must be used, you can use any other ingredients you wish, but at least 2 of the host-picked ingredients must be used in a primary capacity (so you can't just make something totally different with a hint of the 5 ingredients thrown in). You're not limited to one course, you can make a dinner and dessert, or whatever. It's fun to do, and the real goal is to use up that obscure stuff that never seems to get used in the back of the fridge and cupboard.
So, in preparation to move, we played Tin Chef for the first time in years. First, I provided Sol with the ingredients - a bell pepper, a can of Southwest Pepper Jack soup, a bag of dried pinto beans, a box of cannelloni type noodle shell things, and a bag of frozen berries. What with having a "job" or whatever, she couldn't manage them all during the half hour or so she gets to spend at home each night, so she ignored the pasta and the berries (sadly, no berry dessert for me), and created a dip out of the rest. We had nachos that night, with dip.
Then, a week later, she set me up with ingredients - a granny smith apple, egg noodles, balsamic vinegar, the dying remnants of the honey (which needed to be heated up to return to some semblance of non-graininess), and something I'm forgetting. I probably didn't use the one I forgot, because I know I used the other 4. I created 2 dishes. You know I take gaming seriously, so I went on the web looking for recipes. I found this to cover most of the ingredients:
Asian Noodle Salad With Chilies & Peanuts. We didn't have any jalapenos, so I just put in bell peppers, and I didn't realize we DID have peanuts, so sadly those went amiss too. All in all, it was bad. But also, to use the apple (and to finish off the honey), I made
Apple Oat Sesame Cookies, which were good! Really good. But they were a surprise, because they're not like any cookie I've ever seen. You know what they're like? Remember on Seinfeld, when Elaine was going nuts for the tops of muffins, and eventually made a restaurant or something that only sold muffin tops, and threw away the rest? Well these cookies taste
just like the tops of muffins! Soft and chewy. They're even shaped like it. So they are now called "mookies", for muffin-cookies. Real good, try them. I actually ended up having to substitute about half the ingredients, so maybe if you have the actual real ingredients, they're terrible, but I sure liked them the way I made them.
And now you know. The house is still the big ruckus in our lives. We have now cleaned out and sealed off a bathroom, two closets, and the guest room (I use the term "we" loosely... I may have been busy elsewhere at the time this stuff happened). Unfortunately, that's the sum total of rooms we CAN empty out and close off and still live here in relative comfort. Looks like we may be moving next Saturday, so we have to continue in squalor and confusion for 1 more week. Moving is awful, you should never do it. Ever. Just stay put. Play some Guild Wars! It's fun.
